Apperception
by ReadingWhiz89
Summary: Movieverse, set slightly before Supremacy: She speaks the name slowly, uncertainly, because, truth be told, Marie is not sure whom she is speaking to.


Disclaimer:_ The Bourne Identity_,_Supremacy_, and _Ultimatum_ © Robert Ludlum and Universal Pictures. I am simply borrowing the characters.

A/N: OK, so I've been browsing through Bourne fanfiction, and I noticed that there isn't much Bourne/Marie. I understand why (Bourne/Marie is established, after all, while Bourne/Nicky is only implied so there's more room to play with that latter), but this engendered much sadness, and from that sadness, a plotbunny sprung forth. (YAY!) The setting is sometime before Supremacy, only a week or so before Marie's death.

And now, on with the story!

* * *

_**Apperception**_

The marketplace is busy today. It's always busy, of course, but today it seems particularly crowded. People hustle and bustle between, around, and sometimes into one another. The atmosphere is warm and exotic, the smells, sounds, and colors painting a vibrant picture that no artist, however talented, could ever duplicate.

Marie doesn't think she'll ever get used to it.

She wipes her brow, feet shuffling through the sand towards the house—_their_ house. Jason bought it two-and-a-half months ago, and they've lived on the waterfront ever since. Before that, they were running, always running. A few weeks in one place, maybe even a little over a month in the next if they were feeling particularly daring. She didn't mind so much, at first. After all, before meeting Jason, Marie moved around a lot, anyway. But this—this was different. He never tells her such things, but Marie knows why he made them move.

The house is just up ahead, and Marie shifts the weight of the grocery bags against her hip as she slides the key into the lock and turns it, ignoring the creak of hinges as the door swings open. She's been telling him to fix it for ages, but he won't. Two weeks ago, when she finally got fed-up enough to ask him why he refused, all he would say was, "It's better that way." Marie understands now, but the noise still annoys her every time she walks through the door.

"Jason?" she says, only half-expecting an answer. There is none, and she knows without saying that he's gone again.

With a sigh, Marie heads into the kitchen, the scent of freshly brewed coffee greeting her as she starts unloading her purchases. It's more of a chore than usual as she didn't sleep well last night. He woke her up again, as he has so many times before. She knows he tries not to, can see the guilt in his eyes each time his nightmares ruin their nights. He doesn't want to burden her, she knows that, but she wishes he could see he's not to blame, not for this. She chose this, chose _him_: she has no regrets, and neither should he. He never did before—if he had, he never showed it—but recently, she's begun to wonder...

The groceries stored in their proper places, Marie pours herself a cup of coffee. It's warm still, and she smiles a little as she pulls a chair back from the table and sits, mixing in the cream and sugar. It's the little things like this, she reflects, that he does that really touch her. They happen occasionally: sometimes he cleans, even cooks for her, though he's always careful to do it when she's not around. She doesn't really know why, though she does have her suspicions that being caught doing such things would embarrass him. It's silly, but she doesn't mind. Sometimes, she even teases him about it, just to see his reaction. She likes it when he gets flustered: it reminds her of how he was when she first met him.

"_I'm not making this up."_

The words come back to her, a vague echo from another time—another life. Absently, Marie lightly traces the rip of the cup with her finger, remembering. The man she knew then was lost, and in many ways, she knows he still is. Jason Bourne: a man in search of himself, somehow excited, confused, and frustrated all at once by each fragment that comes to him. This has been the case ever since she's known him, especially once the dreams started. But now...

She rises, moving to stand by the doorway. Marie looks out, her lips thinning some as she scans the beach. He's nowhere in sight. She knows what he's doing and why, how straining his muscles helps to relieve the stress he feels each time a particularly disturbing flashback grips him. It's his way of dealing with things he can neither understand nor control, without involving her. That's what he thinks it is, but Marie feels neither protected nor shielded. She feels shut out, now more than ever. The little things he does that she's come to like so much have been growing less and less frequent, and he returns more and more with his clothes stained with sweat and grime.

Things like this shouldn't surprise or overly upset her by now; she knows this. There could be any number of reasons for his behavior, the most logical of which, Marie has to admit, is probably the fact that they haven't moved for so long. Their anonymity is compromised the longer they stay in one location, he's told her, on more than one occasion. More time in one place means more familiarity, more familiarity means more visibility, and more visibility means more dots to be connected and traced, and they can't risk that, he has stated emphatically, over and over again. And yet, for the past several weeks, he's been disregarding his own rules, and again, Marie knows the reason why.

She's sick of moving, and he knows it: of running from place to place, of skulking about in the shadows, never to emerge, as though they have something to ashamed of when they _don't_. It pisses her off to no end that they have to suffer, that _he_ has to suffer, because of a past he can't even remember. He's done terrible things, and she knows that—is acutely aware of it, in fact. But he's _trying_—trying so damned hard just to _live_, and it pains her that the only way he knows to do so is to run.

It's killing him, the man she loves, slowly but surely, and making him into someone she doesn't know. A man who sits, night after night, collecting and documenting scraps in a journal she bought for what amounted to a few bucks frittered away at a convenience store. A man who is distant and reticent, yet afraid to let go. A man who can't stop assessing, evaluating, or calculating, driven by obsessive compulsions rooted in paranoia.

A man who no longer smiles.

Marie can count the number of times she's seen him smile. In fact, she even remembers the exact moment when she first saw Jason smile—_really_ smile. After that first night when she asked if walking around the hotel room would leave any footprints, he smiled. He was happy in that moment, and Marie remembers how much lighter she felt upon seeing it. The next time he smiled at her was when they hugged, several weeks after they parted in France. He was happy then as he hasn't been for a while, and now, with only one candid photograph (taken before he, or she, knew what was happening) to remind her of what he looks like happy, she's starting to worry.

Marie glances out the door once more, reluctantly turning away from the empty beach before withdrawing to the living room. Her gaze lingers, silently noting each place where passports or billfolds are stored. There is also a gun, but she knows it isn't the only one. There are two that she knows about: the first Jason showed her, just in case, and the second she found when she was cleaning. She almost threw it away—_would_ have thrown it away, in fact, if she could have gotten away with it. Marie never hated guns before, but she does now.

Feeling a migraine coming on, she sinks heavily onto the couch and closes her eyes, trying to just let her thoughts drift, to achieve a state of "Zen," or whatever the hell it's called. She doubts she'll ever have that, though. In all the time they've been running, there hasn't been even a whisper of Bourne's former employers at their heels, but Marie is no fool. It'll never end. Not like this.

Not while two men exist in the same physical form.

"Marie."

She jumps, startled by the sound of her name, so softly spoken. Marie opens her eyes, and there he is, the subtle heave of his shoulders the only sign of his recent exertion. Had it not been for the dark blotches discoloring his shirt and the sweat trickling down his brow, no one would have known what he was doing.

Marie does, of course. She always knows.

"Jason."

She speaks the name slowly, uncertainly, because, truth be told, Marie is not sure whom she is speaking to. There are two sides to the man before her now, the first of which being the one she initially knew while the second has only more recently come to the fore. The first she loves more than anything, but the other—she doesn't know that man, and she can't help but wonder which one the name "Jason Bourne" was intended for. She's inclined to think it's the one she doesn't know who should bear that name because, by her reckoning, the CIA created that persona. As for the first, Marie wishes she knew what to call him, but until she does, all she can do is refer to the first as "Jason" and the second as "Bourne." It's a pitiful solution at best, but it's all she knows to do.

They stare at each other silently, neither really quite sure what to make of the other. But then it happens then—a flicker, a spasm,_something_—but only for a moment. The "something" that might have been nothing passes, and Jason (for it _is_ Jason) looks away, eyes downcast. His posture, the set of his mouth, everything—it's all familiar.

And that's all Marie needs to know.

She stands and takes his hand in hers, giving it a slight squeeze. He looks up cautiously, and their eyes meet once more. Marie's mouth curves slightly, eyebrows raised, and without thinking, she says the first thing that comes to mind.

"You reek."

He blinks, his surprise evident...but then, something happens, something so small Marie almost misses it. His lips quirk slightly, lifting awkwardly, as if disuse has made them forget. She sees it, though, the brevity of it somehow making it more than it would have been otherwise.

He's smiling at her.

She smiles back.

Later that night, his arms wrapped about her, Marie's smile, though still present, has diminished, dimmed by solemnity, and as she listens to his soft, even breathing next to her, she knows that tonight, at least, he has a reprieve from the nightmares. Sleep, however, has eluded her. It isn't the first time, and she doubts it will be the last.

Jason's return has encouraged her, but there is no way of knowing how long he will stay. She knows things aren't perfect, never will be, and she never wanted perfection, anyway. However, there are some things that she knows must be, if they are to live. Not survive, because that is what Bourne would do, what he _is_ doing, right now: running. No—if they are going to make it, they have to _live_.

There are two of him, and they are equally a part of one whole. However, Marie believes very firmly that he can choose. No one can dictate what he will be except himself, and though there are things she can do, ways she can help him—and Marie _will do_ whatever it takes to do so—in the end, it will be up to him.

She only prays that he'll stop running long enough to see it.

_Fin._


End file.
